The Year of the Storm by John Mantooth Page A

of a ladder leading down into the darkness.
    â€œStorm shelter. My grandmother used to live back here. I know because I found her journal in an old trunk and she wrote about this place a lot. About how the storm shelter saved her life once. About how she climbed out of it after a big storm and saw that the world had changed.”
    He pointed at the crumbled remains of something half hidden by the trees. An old plow lay next to it. “There’s pieces of buildings everywhere. I call them ruins. They’re all that’s left now. It was a whole town. Called Broken Branch. Another storm, a few months after the one my grandmother survived in the shelter, destroyed everything. Including her. This time, she couldn’t make it to the shelter and she died in the cellar at her own house. My dad was with her. He talks about it sometimes when he goes off into one of his moods. The cabin I mentioned? The one that you’ll see over there if you go too far? That was where she died. My father rebuilt it years ago. The rest of Broken Branch is gone. His sister and him were two of the six that survived. The others moved away to start over somewhere else, I guess.”
    I waited for more, but Seth got quiet and just looked out at the trees.
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œThat’s it. It’s all history now, except one thing.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThis storm shelter.”
    â€œAnd this is what you wanted to show me?”
    â€œThis is the doorway to what I wanted to show you. The real thing is the swamp.”
    â€œIn the painting?”
    â€œYeah. The same one. That’s where we’re going.”
    I tried to imagine what I’d seen in the painting being out here in the woods. The cabin, maybe, but the swamp? No way. Not here. I shook my head. “This doesn’t make sense.”
    â€œForget sense, Walter. Just follow me.”
    He went down the ladder into darkness. I hesitated to follow, purely out of pride. I still hadn’t forgotten our fight, what he’d said about my father. His foolish attachment to the painting. All of that vexed me to no end, but damned if I didn’t feel a new, more powerful emotion as I took hold of the ladder: curiosity.
    â€”
    L ater, I’d hear my dad talking about how the storm had been “a big ’un” and how the roof came right off Bill Morgan’s house, but inside the storm shelter, I could barely hear anything at all. It was out there, sure, but it didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real inside that shelter.
    We sat down on the dirt floor. Seth was across from me. It didn’t matter where. He was close.
    Neither of us spoke. I felt sleepy. We sat there, just soaking in the silence for a long time. Eventually, we heard the thunder as it rocked the world above us, but it was a small, faraway thing that didn’t matter at all.
    â€œThe painting in my room,” he said at last. “I painted it when we moved away. I couldn’t go there anymore, so I painted that picture and hung it up in my room. When things got really bad, I would stare at it and dream of coming back. Then after my mom disappeared, my father decided it was time to move back.”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThat painting was of a swamp. There’s no swamp in these woods. I’ve walked them from top to bottom hundreds of times.”
    â€œYou’re wrong about that.”
    I could do nothing but grin. He was insane.
    â€œI want to take you there.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t understand. We’re inside a storm shelter.”
    â€œYou have to trust me, Walter. Can you do that?”
    â€œSure,” I said. But it was a lie. I felt uncomfortable suddenly, and I couldn’t say why.
    â€œI’ve never shown anybody before.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œThe swamp. It’s where I go. I can show you.” I felt his hand on me. First my